Summary of Lev Golinkin's A Backpack, a Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 The Soviet Union had the best parades in the world. They were mandatory, and attendance was mandatory, rain or otherwise. On April 26, 1986, the year before I entered first grade, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded, spewing a radioactive cloud over the Ukraine.

#2The teacher, Anna Konstantinovna, taught us how to sit and how to use our arms and hands when writing. She also taught us about the Union, and how it was a product of the hard work of Lenin.

#3 The Soviet Union had a system of early-childhood indoctrination known as the Little Octobrist group. The Pioneers were the next level, and they recited the Solemn Pledge of the Pioneers, which was: to love and protect their country passionately, to live as the Communist Party taught them, and to always carry out the laws of the Pioneers.

#4 I was enrolled in the Pioneers program, which was a Communist youth group. I was paired with a first-grader who gave me a book about a jackass named Don’t Know Anything who traveled to the sun and learned that he belonged back home working hard with his fellow citizens.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Jul 12, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822546004

IRB Media

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Insights on Lev Golinkin's A Backpack a Bear and Eight Crates of Vodka

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The Soviet Union had the best parades in the world. They were mandatory, and attendance was mandatory, rain or otherwise. On April 26, 1986, the year before I entered first grade, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded, spewing a radioactive cloud over the Ukraine.

#2

The teacher, Anna Konstantinovna, taught us how to sit and how to use our arms and hands when writing. She also taught us about the Union, and how it was a product of the hard work of Lenin.

#3

The Soviet Union had a system of early-childhood indoctrination known as the Little Octobrist group. The Pioneers were the next level, and they recited the Solemn Pledge of the Pioneers, which was: to love and protect their country passionately, to live as the Communist Party taught them, and to always carry out the laws of the Pioneers.

#4

I was enrolled in the Pioneers program, which was a Communist youth group. I was paired with a first-grader who gave me a book about a jackass named Don’t Know Anything who traveled to the sun and learned that he belonged back home working hard with his fellow citizens.

#5

I was in first grade in Russia during World War II, and we had to wear gas masks every day. The boy at the front of the line was told to run, and we followed. We looped through the school several times, and then took off the masks.

#6

I remember little from the regular school day, except for the masks. The masks were neat, and they made the day stand out.

#7

I missed about half of my first two years of school, because my mother would get me extended-absence notes whenever I fell ill. I didn’t mind being sick, because I enjoyed reading and playing games with my friend Oleg.

#8

The game was like playing in a backyard, except it was an old movie set and we were reenacting the movie. We crept past the army barracks, hid behind the lilacs, and crawled on recon missions over